🎶 Listened to The Wow! Signal by Muse.

The name of this album is a shoutout to the actual “Wow signal” which was an unexpected radio signal recorded by an American radio telescope on August 15th 1977. The signal remains, to this day, unexplained, although much has been made of it as being a broadcast from aliens, in both non-fiction and fiction literature. We can only hope. Although if it was, the extra-terrestrials clearly weren’t excited about what they found as something like that has not been detected ever since.

Anyway, this album certainly comes across as having a very sci-fi atmosphere in places.

From it’s first song Dark Forest:

Launch a pulse out into the abyss Reaching our hand to the lonely, lonely Stars extinguish themselves out of fear A beacon that can’t light the darkness

Broadcasting reckless confessions We will all beg for extinction

Dark Forest is also a real term that seeks to provide one reason that we are not constantly bombarded with off-world signals:

…the idea that extraterrestrial civilizations may exist in abundance across the universe, but remain silent and hidden out of fear that revealing themselves would lead to destruction by a more technologically advanced and hostile civilization

The album over the top, its own cinematic universe. And it’s great. It might even be up there with their early-2000s-era classic records.